


to kingdom come

by oblivioluna



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: Dark Lauren Stans RISE, Dark! Lauren, F/M, Light! Kieran, and then have vague Sexy Times to bring her back to the light, i’m so sorry it took 1.8k to get to the KISSES much less Funky Town, pov: it’s three in the morning and you have to swordfight your gf, you knew this was coming eventually, ‘Writing Practice’
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26341573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oblivioluna/pseuds/oblivioluna
Summary: She’s not alone - he, he, despite what they’ve been through - has forgotten to tell her that.
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 7
Kudos: 75





	to kingdom come

Chateau Argent is within the crowded neighborhood of L’Arlequin, and Kieran only knows this because he’s repeated this over and over in his head, from the directions he’d written down on paper and then promptly burnt with a flick of a match, directions he’d gotten out of a rueful Messenger. A Messenger who he had threatened with the silver of his sword until he had told him what he needed to hear.

_ She occupies that higher-class neighborhood,  _ he had droned.  _ You will find Nemesis in her usual place. She seems to stick to one territory, unlike the rest.  _ Amongst other snippets of information Kieran had gleaned -  _ we recruited her not too long ago, as a spy for the 11th precinct like you, she’s rather effective at what she does.  _

_ Sinclair was her name. _

He’s going to have a hard, long talk with Belladonna Davenport and Tim Sake when he gets back. 

Argent speaks to the days of old: long, winding corridors with gold-leaf decorating the sides, light filtering from the heady sun above, the cloudy sky casting rays onto worn velvet carpets. Curtains veiling rows and rows of windows on either side of him, a winding staircase up to the top in front. Adrenaline rushes through his veins as he takes the steps two at a time, sword ready at his hand, feeling out of place in a place like this - on a mission like this.

He doesn’t save, he takes. But he hasn’t taken for months. He has given, and has been gifted back with gifts he has never known before. _ Before  _ the storm hit - at first, Lauren not immediately tensing up around his presence, Kym casting her winning smiles on him, Will giving his help and Kieran accepting it freely. Rules broken one by one, chains broken one by one, until color started to leech into his drawings and his life both, filling him to the brim with a warmth he didn’t even know existed. 

But the snow knows nothing of the sun, nor fire - and that, perhaps, is why he took to it like a child starving for love. 

She did the opposite, after he’d finally uncovered what she was seeking. Vengeance. Revenge. Tumbled down into a spiral of darkness without end, disappearing from the world, until Kieran started to realize he was going to lose her forever.

He’s not going to - not here, not now.

_ If you go down, I go down, and so forth. _

Maybe it’s stupid to hope, as he charges down the corridors. Maybe it’s all foolish, as he crashes through a set of large antique doors, once a gilded bronze but faded away with time.

Maybe all his doubts vanish the second he sees her.

There’s a fireplace in this large room - cavernous as a cathedral hall, wild and free and  _ aghast  _ with the endless void of the past. Shadows, despite the sunlight outside, cover every surface and floor. The only thing visible is a woman in a velvet armchair. A wide-brimmed black hat covers her face, tipped down, and she wears nothing but inky silk, a blouse curving over her figure, buckled into matching pants, a cloak over her form, buttoned and clasped over her chest with a silver chain. She holds a weapon, he realizes too late. A sword like his own, undecorated, medieval in make, almost. 

When she meets his eyes, her own are flat gold disks with no light in them whatsoever.

“Hello, subordinate,” she rasps, and the voice is not hers.

“You didn’t tell me you infiltrated  _ my  _ workplace,” he says, trying for a joke that isn’t in him right now, and so it comes out as something plantitive. 

“Apologies for not warning you in advance.” Lauren thumbs the hilt of her sword with a gloved hand. When did she learn to wield his own weapon like a viper in her hands? There is so much he does not know about her. He wants to. He  _ wants  _ to. “Your friend - Davenport - caught onto me. I had no choice but to falsify my identity and agree to join them as a spy. Otherwise they’d have both our heads.”

“Understandable. I’m assuming they’re having you do reconnaissance work? They go easier on new recruits.”

“Something like that,” she says, eerily still, and that’s when Kieran knows what the stains on her weapon are.

“Come now, officer.” He tilts his head to the side. “I’m no fool. They call you  _ Nemesis.  _ I know what you’re here for. I know why you agreed to join them. I know  _ why.” _

And that’s when the smallest flicker of hope Kieran had been holding in his chest dies down. She stands to her full height, spreading her arms, a wicked smile spreading over her lips. It’s not her usual smile, either full of mirth or without. She smiles the way he had once hoped she never would; cold, calculating, unyielding.

“I’ve been blind,” she says, clicking her tongue against her teeth in a reprimand. “So, so blind. You were right about me, really. I  _ am _ a hypocrite. I  _ am _ selfish. So selfish that I was willing to pretend that in the name of justice, I was above the law. That I could work towards protecting Ardhalis without succumbing to what I really wanted.”

“I was wrong,” comes tumbling out of his mouth. Nothing scares him like she does, acting this way, so cold, but then again, she’s always been the one to catch him off-guard, the only one able to defeat him. “You know I was. We’ve been over this, officer. I--”

“You can’t call me that anymore,” she says, a bark of laughter escaping her lips. “Not after what I’ve done. Not after what I’ve seen. I’m no enforcer of the law. I broke it over and over again.”

“Then what do I call you?” he asks, and that’s when she sweeps her cloak back, teeth in a ragged snarl.

“I don’t care,” she spits, “so long as you shall never call me anything of yours again. I’m not her, Kieran. I have never been the woman you thought I was. My past sticks to me, and I can’t possibly rid myself of it now.”

“You want revenge,” he says softly. “I know you do. I know what it’s like.”

“You can’t possibly.”

“Do you know who you’re talking to?” he says, laughing. “I  _ do  _ understand, Lauren. I know what it’s like to be kept alone with your thoughts. I know what it’s like for the world to hate you.”

“If you’re here to bring me back,” Lauren sighs, “it’s not going to work.”

“Is that so? I’ve always loved a challenge.”

She chuckles darkly. “But I’ve always been the one to best you.”

And she moves. Too fast for him to dodge. Too fast for him to block her weapon, and so his back crashes into the hard stone wall of the room, Kieran barely comprehending where her sword is in time for him to roll over and avoid being impaled. When he finally reaches the hilt of his katana, they collide in a blur of black and metallic white, yin and yang, rotating mid-air as they both tumble into the hallway. 

“Remember when we first met?” he grits out as her sword clangs against his. “This brings back old memories, darling.”

_ “Stop joking around!”  _ she shrieks, slashing twice at him. “You’re the biggest fool I’ve ever known. Look at you, practically begging for a part of me that doesn’t even exist - there, now,” she croons, as she dodge and parry, dodge and attack, as he stumbles back, flushed with terror. “Why do you care for someone that never cared for you in the first place?”

“I care about you,” he insists. “This isn’t you. You are stubborn and selfish and hypocritical, yes, but you are fiercely loyal and brave and kind even when you shouldn’t be, Lauren,  _ snap out of it.” _

“I told you before.” She readies her sword. “Your so-called plan - if I can even call it one - isn’t working.”

“Lucky for you, I’m an improviser,” he says, and slams his katana into the bannister. Rock crumbles beneath their feet as she yells, free falling - and then not, clutching onto his hand for dear life, as he holds up the free end of a tapestry clinging to the wall.

“Leave me!” she shouts, trying to shake off his grasp. He grips her hand tighter. “You don’t know what I’ve done. Leave me here.” Her laughter has tapered off into a series of held-back sobs. “Leave me alone, Kieran. You always said I’d make a better criminal. You would make a better officer. When you walk the line - you never drift from it.”

“Don’t you dare,” he warns. “Between us, I’d say you’re the fool,  _ mon amour.” _

She’s not alone.

She’s not alone - he, he, despite what they’ve been through - has forgotten to tell her that.

Lauren shakes her head vigorously, enough for her hat to tumble down onto the first floor - and so does she, finally escaping from his grasp. Kieran follows, remembering to land on his feet, and so they crash as one onto the carpeted stairs of the foyer, his old partner stumbling back onto the railing. Before she can protest, he’s holding her against the hard marble railing, hands pinning down her wrists above her head, making sure she can’t attack. Her breath is hot against his skin, and his jaw clenches as she looks up at him, eyes a dark amber - in another time, this would’ve been something much more tender.

“There is nothing left for you here,” she breathes hoarsely. “There is nothing here you want.”

“Wrong.” He swallows harshly. “I want you.”

Under normal circumstances he’d never say such a thing, but he’s desperate, and this is not the time for holding back. He’s not thinking straight, the flame of terror running high in his veins, and his mind is a roaring sea, crashing against the cliffs of panic, silenced only when she moves forward and slams her lips against his in a bruising kiss, hard enough for the both of them to see stars behind the blackened veil of their eyelids. 

Lauren’s mouth is soft and pliant against his, but nothing else about her is. The kiss stuns him, roots him to the ground, as she tilts her head to the side, and he groans when he finally snaps out of it and slants his mouth against hers again, fiercer. He can’t think. He can’t breathe. His first kiss could be worse, he supposes, but he had not expected it to feel like this, be like this - of a lingering darkness, of honey and fire.

“Still?” she purrs, breaking away, and he is left breathless. Her hand twines through his hair; of course she’d broken free, and she moves her free hand to shift his hand down to her waist, around the curve of her hip. “You still want me?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kieran pants, and she smiles tightly as she strokes a strand of hair behind his ear.

“Fool.”

The word barely escapes her lips before he moves to kiss her again, and this time, it speaks.  _ You’re not alone, you’re mine, you’ve always been mine, I will never leave your side again.  _

_ “Lauren,”  _ he gasps, halfway between sanity and a dreamstate, as he hauls her up in his arms, her legs hooking around his waist. She hisses with impatience as her hands fist the back of his ivory shirt, nipping at his bottom lip, pulling back with a savage grin. 

“Don’t you dare - treat me like I’m glass, you-- _ ah,”  _ she says, her command tapering off into a whine as he trails the length of her neck, always making sure to take precise care with that part of her body, pressing a soft kiss to the side of it; then moving down to mouth at her collarbone, making her shiver. “And I know that look in your eye. Don’t call me that.”

“So it’s a lie, then?” he teases into her skin, chuckling as he undoes the ribbon of her blouse with her teeth, making her gasp as he kisses lower, lower, thumbing at her midriff. “You do not wish to be my beloved,  _ mon bien-aimee?” _

Lauren doesn’t answer as she helps him free himself of his own shirt, buttons popping as she exposes toned muscle, making him shiver as she trails her hand down his abdomen, all glittering gold in the light. Black tumbles onto the ground alongside white, his namesake, the pieces falling apart until all that is left is her underclothing and the last of his hesitance. 

“Your voice echoes,” he says, low and heady, in a tone he no longer recognizes, as she grasps onto the railing for dear life, watching him slowly tug her pants down, down. Kieran raises his head from her chest, grinning as he moves to kiss her again, drawing a low grumble of impatience from her lips. “I don’t think there’s anyone around, but you might have to be quieter.”

Lauren curses him out in the foreign tongue they share, both of them sinking lower onto the steps until she’s shuddering with the aftershock of their embrace, reaching up to tug on his hair again. His eyes widen as her ears prick up, eyes dilating like a cat’s. Fear. He recognizes fear.

“After you leave,” she says, trembling, “they’re going to come back. Dylan, my mother, my father - I can still hear their voices, clear as day--” He’s moving faster now, before the light fades from her eyes, and nothing but skin separates them. “--it haunts me, it still does, make it go away, I can’t  _ breathe--” _

“I’m here. I’m here,” he insists, and begins to move. “I’m here,” he repeats, and he’s gone mad now, talking in her ear to keep her with him, to erase the darkness from her mind. “You’re not alone, you never have been, I’ll help you.” The last part is a whisper, and the light begins to grow, twine twin galaxies in their eyes, starbursts in the here and now. “Look at you, my beloved, you’re beautiful, just like that, stay with me,  _ stay with me.” _

_ “Kieran,”  _ she whines into his chest, tears pooling at the edges of her eyes, and they both break. The light fades, eventually, but when he reluctantly looks down at her, it stays in remnants in her eyes - gold, gold again, and he has never felt more relieved. 

“I’ve missed those,” he says, trying for a joke, and hope it lands. She wrinkles her brow.

“What?”

“Those pensive eyes of yours.”

“Sing praises about my pensive eyes when we’re not in an abandoned castle next time,” she grumbles, and they both laugh, still broken, but soon to be whole again, eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> The only reason this thing took 1.8k to get to a KISSING SCENE was because I get what you call an extreme case of Blush whenever I write something spicier than a kiss. So. Enjoy your food, I hope it isn't scraps? I really hope it isn't scraps don'tcancelme but anyways. I love the concept of Lauren and Kieran switching roles, and if it doesn't happen in canon, I will throw hands. The material is there. Look at it. LOOK AT IT!!!!!
> 
> A n y w a y s. I'm just - uh, gonna go crawl in a hole and peace out because of this...uh...writing practice. bye


End file.
